


Happiest Moments

by purpleeyesandbowties



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: A little angst, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate universe- body swap, Fluff, M/M, Seriously tho, i promised myself i wouldn't write yoi fic and here we are, it's really sappy, yuuri still has anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 20:11:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8910373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purpleeyesandbowties/pseuds/purpleeyesandbowties
Summary: “The Rostelecom Cup is the day after my birthday,” Yuuri said. “Okay?” Phichit said, sounding confused.“The day after my twenty-first birthday,” he finished.“Oh, shit.”Yuuri nodded. “Oh, shit.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> hey, yall! so, in this soulmate au, on the day of the youngest member of the soulmate pair's 21st birthday, the two parties bodyswap. they can only switch back if they find each other face-to-face (or if it takes longer than a week, they'd automatically switch back, but that's no fun to write).

Immediately after the assignments went out, Yuuri’s phone started buzzing in his hand. He locked it and set it to the side, not really wanting to talk to Celestino at the moment. He already knew what the conversation would be about and he wasn’t looking forward to it. At all. 

He curled in on himself slightly, tendrils of anxiety already clenching in his stomach. Beside him on his bed, Phichit didn’t notice, absorbed in his phone. He was scrolling and tapping away at an alarming rate, no doubt updating his Instagram and catching up with the skating world’s news. Grand Prix assignments always caused a stir, matching up old friends and fierce rivals alike in the qualifying rounds.

“Yuuri,” Phitchit exclaimed, “this is great! We’ll be skating together in the Rostelecom Cup! This is our year, I can feel it.”

Yuuri couldn’t help but smile at his friend’s relentless optimism. Neither he nor Phichit had made it to the GPF before, though they’d both come close. Yuuri wished he could share Phichit’s excitement—up until now, he’d been feeling good about this season. But this….this could ruin it all.

Phichit finally looked up from his phone. “Hey,” he said, catching the look of uncomfortable worry on Yuuri’s face. “What is it?”

“It’s nothing,” Yuuri said, giving him what he hoped was an encouraging smile. Phichit pursed his lips, obviously not buying it.

“Seriously, Yuuri. What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing, really,” Yuuri insisted. 

“Would it happen to be connected to the fact that your phone hasn’t stopped ringing since we got the assignments?”

Yuuri sighed, scooping up his phone and pressing it against his body to silence the buzzing. Phichit held out his hand. “Tell me or give me the phone, but one way or another, I’m getting answers.”

Yuuri groaned in frustration, burying his head in his hands. Phichit sat back, giving him time to collect his thoughts.

“The Rostelecom Cup is the day after my birthday,” Yuuri said, sitting up again.  
“Okay?” Phichit said, sounding confused.

“The day after my twenty-first birthday,” he finished.

“Oh, _shit_.”

Yuuri nodded. “Oh, shit.”

—

Okay, so there was a plan. Yuuri wasn’t sure the plan would work, but it was a plan. Celestino had made some calls (to the GPF organizers, the judges, the press, and anyone else who possibly needed to know. Which was embarrassing, but also necessary). The plan was simple. Kind of.

Once he, Yuuri, woke up in his soulmate’s body (assuming he was the youngest half of the soulmate pair and that it was his birthday that would set off the reaction) on the morning of his twenty-first birthday, he would have thirty-six hours to make it back to Russia in time for the competition. The judges had agreed to move his performance slot from third to last, to give him the most time possible to get back, but there was no way to reschedule. It would be up to him to get a ticket and a flight back to Russia in time. He’d memorized his credit card number and called his bank to let them know he might be charging an unexpected expense in the next week. The rest of the plan relied on Celestino and Phichit. Yuuri trusted his coach and his best friend to handle it, but the whole situation was anxiety-inducing enough in the first place. The fact that he’d have little to no control over how things went on the other end wasn’t helping at all. 

Celestino, assisted by Phichit, who could speak passable Japanese in addition to English and had a tentative grasp on a few more languages, would wait outside Yuuri’s hotel room until Yuuri’s soulmate emerged. They would hopefully be able to find a common language to explain the situation, and rush to the airport to meet Yuuri so they could swap back. If they worked fast, and Yuuri was lucky getting plane tickets, a flight from anywhere in the world could probably make it back to Russia in time for the Rostelecom Cup. Yuuri would call as soon as he got oriented in his temporary body, book a flight, and hightail it back. Hopefully in time to perform. Hopefully in time to meet his soulmate and apologize. He knew it was a non-traditional way to go about it—most people spent a good amount of time preparing for their soulmate reveal, dreaming up elaborate clues to piece together after they were back in their original bodies, or routes to follow to find their intended. But Yuuri couldn’t wait the full week it would take to reverse the process. So he had to cheat it. He felt terrible about it, but what else could he do? As much as it hurt him to say, at this point in his life, skating was more important. Like Phichit said, this was his year. He could feel it.

 

The night before the Cup, Yuuri was buzzing with nervous energy. That was normal for the night before a big competition. But on top of his usual nerves, he had nerves about the possibility of waking up in a different body and the stress of having to get back on his own. Possibly from a different country. Or continent. Having to speak a different language, most likely. He shook his head, forcing himself away from that line of thought. He and Celestino had been through a dozen different scenarios. No matter what happened tomorrow, they would be prepared. 

A tiny part of Yuuri hoped that he’d wake up in the next morning in his own body. After all, he had a fifty-fifty shot of being the older half of his soulmate pair and his twenty-first birthday would pass without incident. But a bigger part of himself knew that waking up in his own body would be one of the biggest disappointments of his life. Because the other possibility was that he didn’t have a soulmate at all, and that he’d spend the rest of his life waiting in vain to wake up in someone else’s body. And even thinking about that possibility made despair well up inside his chest.

A knock on the door interrupted him before he could really start spiraling. Some of the other skaters had arrived at the hotel hosting them and had gone out for drinks. Yuuri had already fended off invitations from a few of them, citing needing more time to prepare his program, but there was one person he knew would come knocking on his door no matter what.

“Hey,” Phichit said, holding up a bag of popcorn. “I thought you might want to watch a movie tonight.”

Yuuri nodded gratefully, holding the door open. Phichit trotted in and flopped on Yuuri’s bed.

“I would offer to stay the night in case you couldn’t fall asleep, but I’m pretty sure your soulmate wouldn’t like it very much if they woke up next to a strange man.”

“Yeah, maybe not,” Yuuri agreed. He hesitated. “Phichit….what if I wake up tomorrow and I’m… still here?”

“Then you’re probably the oldest,” Phichit said easily, but Yuuri could tell he knew that’s not what Yuuri was thinking. He didn’t let Yuuri fall down that stairway of thought, instead calling up a movie on the hotel’s TV. Yuuri smiled when he heard the opening strains of music.

“ _The King and the Skater,_ really?” he asked. “We’ve seen this a thousand times.”

“But it’s a classic! At least this way, it might put you to sleep.”

Yuuri sat down next to Phichit, pretending to huff in annoyance. He took the obligatory selfie with his friend, which was promptly posted to Instagram, captioned “#boysnightin #soulmatestakeout #wheretheyattho” and settled in to watch the movie.

He was asleep within an hour.

—

Yuuri woke up in a hotel room. He came to suddenly, jerking upright in the bed. For an awful moment, he thought he was still in his own body—the room was nearly identical to the one he’d fallen asleep in the night before—but he was in the bed closest to the door rather than the one closest to the window. And the room’s layout was a mirror of his own. He squeezed his eyes shut, taking a moment to breathe deeply. 

He was in his soulmate’s body. This was happening. This was real. Giddy with relief and nerves and excitement, he took another long breath and let it out slowly. Just as slowly, he opened his eyes. Carefully, he felt his face. A sharp nose, cheekbones much more prominent than his own. Soft hair that fell over one eye. Trailing a hand down his face and throat revealed the faint sensation of beard scruff on his chin and a firm Adam’s apple. His head hurt, like he had a mild hangover. He smacked his lips and—yeah, that morning breath confirmed it. His soulmate had been drinking the night before. He smiled to himself. The thrill of deducing pieces of his soulmate’s life was amazing. Suddenly, he wished he could do it the old-fashioned way then, just say fuck it to the plan and go on a week-long journey to find his soulmate. For a long moment, he was sorely tempted. Reason and responsibility won out in the end. With a sigh, he swung his legs out to crawl out of the bed. His soulmate was well in shape, he noted, feeling the strength in his legs. He wobbled a bit when he stood—his soulmate was taller and thinner than he was, all lithe muscle and no fat to speak of. 

“You must be an athlete,” he muttered to himself. The words came out in Japanese, but with a strange shape to the sound, like that mouth and tongue had never spoken it before and wasn’t quite sure what to do with those particular syllables. He nodded decisively.

“No time to talk,” he said. “I have to figure out who you are.”

—

Victor woke up slowly. He stretched, feeling tired and draggy—though after the shots Chris had thrust into his hand the night before, it wasn’t actually that surprising. He didn’t feel terribly hungover, which was nice. He knew he would be able to shake a hangover before the competition started the next day, but having a clear head for practice would be ideal. He hadn’t bothered to open his eyes yet, still hazy from sleep. He considered falling back asleep until his alarm went off, but decided against it. If he got up now, he might be able to get the rink before anyone else. He loved early mornings, just him and the ice, where he could think clearly and skate how he wanted to. With that in mind, he opened his eyes.

The room was blurry.

Really blurry. He rubbed his eyes. When he removed his hands, the room was still blurry.

“The fuck?” he mumbled, then sat straight up. The voice that came out of his mouth wasn’t his own. 

“The fuck!” he shouted. In a panic, he looked down at his hands—they were smaller than normal, the skin smoother and several shades darker. Hurriedly, he ran his hands through his hair, finding it short and mussed with sleep. He leapt out of the bed, truly panicking now. He spotted a blur of blue on the nightstand and grabbed at it, relieved when it turned out to be a pair of glasses. With the world finally clear again, he rushed to the bathroom and flipped on the light. The man staring back at him in the mirror was _definitely_ not him. His jaw dropped, eyes tracing the face that stared back at him—soft brown eyes, tan skin, slightly chubby cheeks, no trace of facial hair. There was a note taped to the mirror, written in Japanese.

All at once, it hit him. 

Victor was twenty-five. His twenty-first birthday had come and passed. He went to sleep and woke up, heartbroken, in the same body. As the years passed, more and more hope had slipped away from him; he had pretty much accepted that he didn’t have a soulmate. He didn’t think he’d ever wake up and find himself somewhere else. Someone else. 

He sat down on the hard tile of the hotel’s bathroom floor. He laughed. The sound came out bright and goofy, which made him laugh even harder. It was so ridiculous—just last night, he’d told Chris that he would be alone forever, which was the reason for the aforementioned shots. Chris had spouted some nonsense about waiting and not giving up too early (easy for him to say when he went to sleep on his twenty-first and woke up in the bed he went to sleep in, in his boyfriend’s body) and let Victor complain about it anyway. And now, here he was. With undeniable proof that he had a soulmate. A very _cute_ soulmate, if he was remembering correctly. He stood up again, studying the man in the mirror. 

“I think I already love you,” he said.“Now let’s figure out who you are.”

—

Victor got dressed with his eyes closed—he was a gentleman, after all—and after pulling on a thermal shirt and sweats, he pulled a beanie over his soulmate’s bedhead rather than attempt to style it, and opened the door.

And walked directly into a young man standing on the other side.

“Oh, god, I’m sorry,” Victor said, grabbing the man’s shoulder to steady him. The man he’d run into was shorter than him—both his normal self and his current one—with dark hair and a blinding grin.

“Oh my god! You’re not Yuuri!” he exclaimed in English. “What language do you speak? What’s your name? Oh my god, I told him, I knew he had a soulmate!”

The man grabbed Victor’s hand and shook it vigorously.

“My name is Phichit! Who are you?”

“Victor,” Victor said, taken aback. “I speak Russian and English, Um, obviously I speak English since that’s what we’re.…What are you doing here?”

“I’m just so excited that you’re here. But where were you last night? We have to find Yuuri—that’s your soulmate, by the way. He’s a professional skater, see, and he has a competition tomorrow, so we have to find him and get him back here as soon as possible so he can compete!”

Victor held up his hands. “Wait, wait. My soulmate is a skater? Named _Yuuri?_ ”

For a terrible moment, Yuri Plisetsky’s face flashed in his mind—but that Yuri was far too young to be his soulmate. And this was obviously not Yuri Plisetsky’s body he was currently inhabiting. Phichit nodded in affirmation.

“Yeah, Yuuri Katsuki. He’s from Japan, but we’re in Russia right now for the Rostelecom Cup. That’s one of the qualifiers for the Grand Prix Final.”

“I know what the Rostelecom Cup is,” Victor said absently. “I’m competing in it, too.”

He was so absorbed in processing all the new information—his soulmate’s name for one, the fact that he was apparently also a skater for another, trying in vain to remember if he’d ever talked to or even seen Yuuri Katsuki before today—that he hardly noticed when Phichit gasped sharply.

“Hmm?” Victor said, tuning back into reality to find Phichit staring at him with his mouth hanging open. “What is it?”

“You’re….competing. In the Rostelecom Cup. Vict—oh my god, you’re _Victor Nikiforov!”_

“I am,” Victor said, cocking his head. “Why is this important information?”

“Yuuri has a giant crush on you!” Phichit blurted out, then slapped his hands over his mouth,turning red. Victor felt a smile creep over his face.

“Well, lucky for him, I might just have a giant crush on him, too.”

—

On the upside, Yuuri didn’t need to travel halfway across the world in order to get to the Rostelecom Cup like he’d thought. He’d only have to go downstairs. But that didn’t really matter anyway, because Yuuri had no plans to leave this room. Possibly until he died. Or until he went back to his own body, whichever came first.

He was currently sitting on the toilet in the bathroom, the harsh sound of his breathing filling the small room. Yuuri had had his share of panic attacks, but this one was one of the worst he’d ever experienced. And for good reason—his soulmate was….

He shook his head. Nope. He couldn’t even think the words. No matter what the mirror told him (and even with the tiny glance he’d managed before his heart kicked into overdrive fast enough to make his head spin, he’d recognized the man in the mirror. How could he not? Victor Nikiforov’s posters had wallpapered his room for more than a decade. He had every video of Victor Nikiforov’s performances ever recorded saved on his computer to study from. He had a ‘Victor Nikiforov fan club member’ pin from his middle school school years buried in the back of his desk drawer, for fuck’s sake!)

No matter what the mirror told him, it wasn’t true. It had to be a mix-up. There was no way his _soulmate_ was _Victor_ _Nikiforov_. 

There was just no way.

So he sat there, on the toilet, vaguely contemplating vomiting in hopes that would make the sick feeling in his stomach go away—or maybe it was the dregs of the hangover Vict—his soulmate had—and trying to regulate his ever-increasing breathing, when someone knocked on the door. 

His head snapped up. The knock came again, harder this time.

“Yuuri?”

Phichit’s voice was cautious, calming. “Yuuri, are you in there? There’s someone out here who wants to meet you.”

A strangled sound left Yuuri’s mouth, somewhere between a ‘no’ and a shout.

“Um,” a new voice said, and god, how weird was it to hear his own from the other side of the door. “Can you open the door, please?”

Yuuri swallowed down panic (and bile). He shook his head, even though he knew they couldn’t see him, managing to make it to the door. He rested his forehead against the door, hand on the lock. Whether to undo it or keep it in place, he wasn’t sure.

“Are you okay?” Phichit asked softly. 

_“No,”_ he managed, in Japanese. _“I’m not alright.”_

_“Please let me in,”_ Phichit responded in his own shaky Japanese. _“I have Victor with me—he wants to meet you. He’s excited that you’re his—”_

_“Don’t say it!”_ Yuuri nearly shouted. _“I don’t—he couldn’t want me—there’s no way that he’s my—we can’t….”_ he broke off, breathing too fast again. 

The other voice—his voice spoken by someone else—spoke. Softly, gently, in accented English, he said, “Yuuri. That’s your name? Will you open the door? I want to meet you.”

“No you don’t,” Yuuri whispered. “You don’t.”

“Why not?” Victor asked, like he was honestly curious, like he didn’t know who he was.

“Because…because I’m not who you want. You’re the greatest figure skater alive and I’m…I’m no one. I…I’m not good enough to be your soulmate.”

Victor was silent for a moment. Yuuri heard a sigh and a quiet thump, like Victor had dropped to the floor. Yuuri pressed his back against the door, sliding until he hit the floor. He tilted his head back to rest against the door.

Finally, Victor spoke.

“I spent four years thinking I didn’t have a soulmate. It hurt more than anything I could imagine, believing you weren’t out there, waiting for me. When I woke up this morning and realized I wasn’t in my own body, I was the happiest I’d ever been in my life. And then, to discover my soulmate shares my love of skating, and that he happened to be in the very same building as me? It was perfect. So many happy moments, one after another, each one better than the last, all unanticipated. I’ll respect it if you don’t want me, Yuuri Katsuki, I really will. But don’t you dare think for an instant that I don’t want you.”

Yuuri cleared his throat, pushing past the tears. “But you don’t even know me,” he whispered.

“I haven’t met you yet, officially,” Victor said, a touch of humor in his voice, “but I’ve always loved you. My soul knows yours. That’s why I’m sitting here in your clothes, speaking with your voice. We know each other, even if it doesn’t feel like it yet. So, please—” his voice broke. “Please. Let me in. Give me the chance know you.”

 

Slowly, Yuuri stood. He unlocked the door with a soft click, and was surprised to hear an equally soft intake of breath from Victor. The door creaked open slowly, revealing Victor, alone in the hallway—looking nothing like himself and everything like Yuuri—standing outside his door. His expression melted into one of pure joy and relief.

“Can I come in?” he asked. Yuuri nodded, opening the door a little further. Victor took a step into the room, just enough to get in the door and close it behind him. Reflexively, Yuuri’s arms came up and wrapped around Victor’s waist, Victor’s arms coming up around him at the same time. Yuuri felt like he was floating, not quiet in control of his own body. Which, of course, wasn’t even his own. Their bodies pressed together, close enough that they couldn’t tell where one person started and the other ended. Yuuri wasn’t sure who moved first or if they moved at the same time, but as soon as their lips pressed together, the floating feeling intensified until it was nearly dizzying. When they pulled apart, he had to tilt his head up to chase Victor’s lips.

“Are…are we back in our own bodies?” Victor asked quietly. He still had his eyes closed from the kiss. Yuuri couldn’t help but find it adorable.

“I think so,” he said, just as quietly. Victor opened his eyes and smiled at him, warm and incredibly soft, and Yuuri felt himself return it easily. His arms tightened around Victor.

“This feels like a dream,” he admitted.

“Mm. Can’t be. My dreams always end terribly. This is too good to be a dream.”

Victor tipped his chin up and kissed him again, gently. “Thank you,” he said simply.

“For what?”

“For giving me a chance. For opening the door. For being you.”

“I’m sorry for freaking out,” Yuuri said sheepishly. 

Victor laughed. “Oh, Yuuri, you have nothing to apologize for.”

He brought Yuuri’s hands to his mouth and kissed the knuckles.

“Now, my darling, as much as I want to stay here in with you forever, I think we may be late to warmups.”

Yuuri glanced at the clock and swore out loud. He pushed himself out of the warm circle of Victor’s arms, already heading for the door.

“Wait, wait,” Victor laughed. “I have to get dressed, wait for me.”

Yuuri bounced impatiently on his toes as Victor collected clothes from his suitcase.

“Um, should I….” he asked a little awkwardly, pointing to the door. 

Victor winked saucily at him. “All this is yours anyway,” he said, gesturing to himself. “You might as well look.”

Yuuri blushed and covered his face with his hands. Victor stuck out his tongue playfully when he saw Yuuri peaking out between his fingers, efficiently stripping out of his pajamas and changing into his warmup clothes. He stopped in the bathroom to brush his teeth and reappeared at Yuuri’s side. Yuuri surprised them both by taking Victor’s hand. Victor glanced down at their interlocked fingers, a goofy smile spreading across his face.

“You know what, Yuuri? I was wrong before. _This_ is my happiest moment.”

—

Victor said those words again and again, but Yuuri could tell he meant them every time.

“This is my happiest moment,” he said when they stood side by side the next day, each with a medal around their necks and their hands clasped together for the world to see.

He said it again on their first real date, and again their first morning waking up together, on their six-month anniversary, when Yuuri won the GPF after dedicating three more years to it, and when one world champion title became two. He said it the day they got matching gold rings and again when they signed the wedding certificate. He said it on their honeymoon and on the day they announced their joint retirement from figure skating. He said it for no reason and that was reason enough. Every time he meant it more than the time before.

—

He and Yuuri got custom engravings on their wedding rings for an anniversary present. It was Yuuri’s idea, and so he was the one to take charge of it. He was strangely secretive about the whole thing, and Victor sorely missed the subtle weight of his wedding band for the three whole days before Yuuri brought it back. 

Yuuri went down on one knee, holding up a black velvet box.

Victor couldn’t help a delighted little laugh. “Oh, Yuuri, you never lack for surprises, do you?”

“Shush, I’m trying to say something,” Yuuri groused, but he was smiling. He cleared his throat, holding up the box again.

“Victor, we’ve had a lot of our happiest moments together. I love you more every time you share one with me. But I realized that it’s not really the moments themselves that make me so happy. It’s you. So I changed the wording a little bit.”

He handed over Victor’s ring a little shyly. “I hope you like it,” he said.

Victor took the ring from him, examining it. Across the inside, in a simple font, it said, “You are my happiest moment.”

“Oh, Yuuri,” he breathed. The ring was the perfect fit it always had been, but somehow it felt even more secure on his finger. Like it was made to be there. “It’s perfect.”

“Good,” Yuuri said softly. He kissed Victor, slow and deep and absolutely perfect. “Because it’s true. You always have been.”

“And you have always been mine.”

Victor laced their hands together. 

“Now come on, love. We have a lifetime of happiest moments to live.”

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sadhipstercat on tumblr, come talk to me!


End file.
